England has followed Italy and France, shunning Socialist/Labor rule, hoping for governments that spend less time being tired, hack ideologues and more time being efficient and respectful of citizens' abilities to fend for themselves.

The English election was a rout of the sort Bush became familiar with in 2006: the Conservatives gained 256 seats, and Labor lost 331 seats, dropping it to a well-deserved third place, with the Conservatives taking 44 percent of the votes, Liberal Democrats 25 percent, and Labor 24 percent.

The biggest loser after Labor itself was Ken Livingstone, the hard-Left, America-hating, Islamist-cuddling, Warmie fanatic, never learned a thing from the fall of Communism mayor of London, who lost to Conservative Boris Johnson.

But it was the mayoral race, in which Mr. Johnson, 43, defeated the experienced Labor incumbent, Ken Livingstone, 62, by 1,168,738 votes to 1,028,966 votes, that was the biggest shock — a sure sign of a deep national weariness with the Labor government. London has been resolutely Labor in recent years, and its loss is a bitter blow to the national party .

“This was the first big test of Gordon Brown and David Cameron,” said Stephan Shakespeare, a co-founder of YouGov, a polling company, speaking of the Conservative Party leader. “We’ve had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of debate and a lot of polling, and until this moment the general feeling of malaise that hung over this government hasn’t been made concrete or specific. Now it has. It shows that something has profoundly changed in British politics.” [NYT]

The NYT gets through the news with no mention of Livingstone's voting history and politics, but there are plenty of reasons for his demise, beginning with the hatred he generates from car-lovers, and certainly including those who were galled by the embrace Livingstone gave the most radical of Islamists. Funny the NYT didn't mention that.

Matthew Paris sums it all up well in the [UK] Times:

It's over. There was nothing constructive in the voters' message. These elections were not an invitation to change. They were a big two-fingered salute, a raspberry, a pressing of the de-trousered national buttocks to the window of the polling station. The voters are bored, tired, disillusioned and out of love. The affair, which in 1997 was (for the British people) uncharacteristically intense, is over, and the falling out is correspondingly bitter. Such flames are not rekindled - and certainly not by Mr Brown, whose personal stamp characterises this administration.

This columnist's advice to the Parliamentary Labour Party is therefore simple. Give up. With the leader you've got and led as you are, all is lost.

"Thank you for the "Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked them, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— High school teacher.